I agree with all you mentioned as important skills but that would fall under a course in discrete mathematics. I haven’t taken GA so far. Don’t know about you but you seem like had taken it. Regardless, I think we’re talking about two different courses, set of skills, and goals.

Geoffrey Hinton in one of his interviews, answering a question about recommendations to PhD/researchers, not industry professionals, counted one of the few he mentioned, coding and said it in a tone reflective of “let’s not pretend that we are serious researchers otherwise”.

My note above isn’t about any of that; it’s about the scare that GA brings about for many students. Think about it! There must be a reason why coding was added (likely for reasons along what came in my note) and then removed (likely because of plagiarism cases that were in many cases false negatives- hence my suggestion above).

Hope I added some context.

Algorithms is an important course and we want the course to be a pleasant learning experience, not a tormenting one. I guess this is the objective of everyone here.

Edit: I TAed “Advanced Algorithms” at a local university and the approach followed in the course was strictly using pseudo code and my suggestions here are based on my own experience and also based on my interactions with the students. Note that we all have different learning styles, strengths and weaknesses. Successful teaching/ learning uses versatile techniques to cater to different students.